1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to ultrasound systems, and more particularly to an ultrasound system and a method for displaying multi-planar images.
2. Background Art
The ultrasound system has become an important and popular diagnostic tool due to its non-invasive and non-destructive nature. Modern high-performance ultrasound imaging diagnostic systems and techniques are commonly used to produce two- or three-dimensional images of internal features of patients.
An ultrasound system generally uses a probe containing an array of piezoelectric elements to transmit and receive ultrasound signals. The ultrasound system forms an image of human internal tissues by electrically exciting transducer elements to generate ultrasound signals that travel into the body. Echoes reflected from tissues and organs return to the transducer element and are converted into electrical signals, which are amplified and processed to produce ultrasound data. The ultrasound data may include volume data obtained by using a 3-dimensional probe, etc.
Generally, the ultrasound system is configured to perform volume rendering upon the volume data to form a 3-dimensional ultrasound image. Also, the ultrasound system may be adapted to reformat planar images by using a reference plane (e.g., sagittal plane, coronal plane or axial plane) or an arbitrary plane set in the volume data, which is referred to as a multi-planar reformatting (MPR) method. The MPR method is widely used in various medical imaging fields in addition to the ultrasound fields.
However, the MPR method is carried out by reformatting the planar images with planes having merely different directions in the volume data in the conventional ultrasound system. Thus, it is difficult to obtain sufficient information regarding a target object to be reformatted to multi-planar images. As such, there is a problem in that the target object, which exists in many planes and has un-echoic areas (e.g., blood vessel), cannot be reformatted.